Living Sales Excellence - Dennis Connelly's Blog

We all know the prospect who waits to the last minute and then tells you everything is fine except for the price. “What can you do about the price?” or “If you can match these guys’ price, the deal is yours.” or “The committee is prepared to approve the start date with you, but we need to get to our budgeted number. If you do that, we're good to go.”

When coaching clients, I like to ask them questions when they have prospects who seem to be changing the game at home plate. Here are some examples:

What was the return on investment (ROI) at your quoted price?

What was their compelling reason to work with you?

Before you gave them your proposal, when you asked them if they could spend this much money with you to solve all their problems and/or realize all these gains, what did they say?

Is price really the problem? Or does the problem lie in the execution of the sales process? We shouldn’t be in a position where nothing matters at the end but price. If we find ourselves there anyway, then we must not have uncovered a good enough reason to buy, or there is not enough urgency, or we haven’t differentiated ourselves, or we don't understand the decision process, criteria, and timeline, or all of the above. In other words, we weren’t following an effective sales process. Or they’re bluffing!

Recently, I was coaching a client who faced another problem. His prospect told him at the last minute, “Your product needs to have this one other feature,” adding, “That would really make it work for us, and we'd be prepared to say 'yes' now.”

I asked my client the following questions:

Were they already getting this feature from the incumbent? No.

Are there other features you're providing that were important to them and that they couldn’t get anywhere else? Yes.

And without this ‘important’ feature that they 'really need,' do they have a compelling reason to buy from you?

Can they spend the money?

Do they believe you understand their issues and have the capability to solve them?

Do you understand the entire decision making structure?”

Etc.

In short, doesn’t this look a lot like the price issue?

At the home stretch, your prospects have one last chance to exercise their leverage before committing to the deal. At this moment, they believe they can extract stuff from you – a better price or more features. Why not try, after all? But if you have followed the sales process correctly, then you know where your leverage really is, and you know whether or not they are bluffing.

The trouble is that they might really believe that they need these issues solved at the last minute. They need that price lower. They want the additional features. It would be just great! And even if they are bluffing, it might not be conscious. Such a devilish place to be, no?

Moving past these objections means acknowledging their concerns and requests, and then reverting back to what's really important. "I understand getting to your budgeted number is really important to you. Can I ask you a few questions about what we talked about in our first meeting?" If you do this well, they might even forget they brought it up.

Following the correct sales process for your business is critical to avoiding this endgame. Does your team have a process that they follow religiously? Do your sales managers know how to effectively coach to your process? Do they hold their people accountable to the sales process? Are your sales people getting one incremental step better every day? Maybe it’s time to find out.

If you would to see Dave Kurlan talk about the value of an evaluation, click on the link below.

If you would like to send one or more of your sales managers to a two-day Sales Leadership Intensive, or would like to learn more about it, click on the following link.

We’ve touched on issues of enablement, management, infrastructure, and other critical areas this month as well. These articles have been written in support of our upcoming webinar that you won’t want to miss if you are a business leader or sales leader who believes that sales could be a lot better at your company than they currently are.

In this fast-paced, one-hour webinar, we're going to cover sales architecture and other related issues in more depth. If you're the person who needs to get the sales organization right, this webinar is for you.

Here is the webinar agenda:

Sales Process - Optimizing Conversions

Sales Methodology – Why It Matters

Sales Messaging - How to Get It Right

3 Critical Conversations

Executing in a Changing Economy

Sales Model – Making It Scalable

Channels - Optimizing Your Traction

Sales Training - Critical Components for Maximum Impact

If you missed some of the articles specifically related to these issues and this webinar, here they are:

Today, I want to talk more about how sales and marketing must work together. It's sort of nuts, in today's market, to let these two organizations work in a vacuum. They must continually feed each other valuable market information in a healthy, robust, iterative process of information gathering and feedback.

Far from silos, the line between these two organizations has been mixed together like chemicals in a flask, producing a new kind of hybrid organization within the existing company structure. Sales leadership and marketing leadership must have the right chemistry to drive results for the organization. Let’s take a look at some of the questions we need to be asking:

Who are our customers?

So what are some of the ways that sales and marketing can help each other? Of primary importance is answering the question of who we are targeting. Who is our customer and what are their issues? And another important and often overlooked question is who do we want as customers in the first place?

What is our strategy?

How are we getting in front of our customers? How are we getting their attention? What role is marketing playing and what does the handoff to sales look like? Ideally, not only is marketing feeding the front end of the pipeline, but they are also planting seeds in the minds of your prospects, or more accurately "suspects." These seeds or issues then serve as a conversational starting point from which the sales staff can probe further. When marketing points out a source of frustration or a missed opportunity, it preframes the discussion for your sales people.

How do we gain traction?

No, not the kind where they drill holes in your head. But more like a good snow tire. Can sales move the prospect through the sales process effectively? How can marketing help? How far along the sales cycle is marketing bringing the prospect? And how far should the salesperson back up the prospect in the process to ensure that the bases are properly covered?

Marketing might be setting the stage, but sometimes they've shared so much information that it creates a false impression in the mind of the salesperson that they are further along the sales cycle than they really are.

How many of your sales people will recognize as a mirage, when a prospect only appears to be in a later stage of the sales cycle, but really isn't? How many of them can properly bring this prospect back to an earlier point in the cycle, perhaps somewhere near that point discussed above where marketing might have identified a key source of frustration? If you're not sure, you can click here to find out.

How do we get the business?

Finally, how are we getting the business? Where do we fit in the market? What kind of feedback can sales bring back to marketing to adjust the message and continue an iterative process that improves your results and desired outcomes with time?

Not long ago, marketing created the brand, researched the market, and positioned the products. The job of sales was to close the business that marketing teed up for them. The problem is that communication wasn't strong enough nor frequent enough, leading to complaints from both sides. "The leads were no good." Or, "Why can't those guys close the business?"

Today, a more iterative approach is needed. The market is changing rapidly. Marketing must solicit from sales real-time information gleaned from all interaction in the field to constantly adjust their message and ensure that their positioning statements are resonating with their intended audience.

Join me and a panel of sales experts for a powerful, one-hour webinar that will address the topics that the Kurlan team has been writing about this month. The webinar is on February 5th and we will discuss, "Leading Your Ideal Sales Force - Part 1"at 11 AM Eastern Time.